"You worked hard out there, Inori."
As soon as she stepped off the stage, Kira rushed over and draped a jacket around Inori's shoulders.
Inori herself didn't mind either way—but Kira had made a habit of it, and she did it every single time.
"Excuse me, both of you, could I have a moment?" A man cut through the crowd and planted himself in their path. "That Tori no Hito MV was exceptional. Have either of you ever considered adapting it into a film? I'm a director from Orb—"
"Um, this is a bit of an imposition…"
Kira stepped in front of him.
"You! You're perfect for the male lead!"
"Huh?"
Kira shot Inori a helpless look.
Inori leaned close to Kira's ear: "He's from Hollywood."
Kira understood immediately. "I'm sorry, director. We're from a neutral country—we don't take sides."
She turned to leave with Inori, but the director wasn't ready to let go.
Then Kira reached out and firmly took hold of his arm, moving him out of the way.
As the two of them walked off, the director's expression curdled into contempt. "Tch. A woman with strength like that—she's a Coordinator, isn't she."
[The Naturals-versus-Coordinators tension is so blatant here—the moment he clocked she was a Coordinator, his whole attitude flipped]
[Worse than the Federation vs. Zeon gap?]
[Actually, it's rooted in production capacity. Did you forget the opener? The space colonies already match Earth's total GDP output—that's already explosive on its own.]
[Forget that, I want to know if there's actually going to be a film-within-a-film]
[Tori no Hito sounds so ethereal]
A film-within-a-film?
That actually sounded interesting.
A Guilty Crown character shooting a Macross film inside the Gundam universe was admittedly a bit unhinged—but it had a certain entertainment value.
Although—more than that, Inori was thinking about the "developments" yet to come.
Things were different from the original timeline.
In the source story, Creuset was supposed to send his team directly in for a surprise assault and infiltration mission.
But this world had its deviations.
The production set did have "directors," yes—but this was also a genuine dimensional world, fully real, and every person in it had their own agency.
The first anomaly was the ZAFT ship collision incident from the previous year.
During that event, Heliopolis's emergency systems had suffered a total collapse, leaving the Orb side almost completely flat-footed. The colony had essentially done nothing the entire time—paralyzed start to finish.
They'd dispatched an investigation team afterward, but it had turned up nothing.
Their only conclusion: someone had piloted an MS whose frame hadn't even been fully assembled, and used it to destroy that demon-like GINN as if it were nothing.
The incident was so absurd it remained an open case to this day.
If ZAFT hadn't been covering something up themselves—too guilty to push the matter—the intelligence about Project G would have leaked a year ago.
Because security had since been reinforced with additional exterior gun emplacements and defenses, the Creuset Team couldn't simply charge in like in the original. A direct surprise assault was off the table.
For the sake of "balance," Inori had fed the Creuset Team a small piece of intelligence—enough to let them learn about the Gundams slightly ahead of the original schedule, giving them a window to infiltrate instead. She'd also arranged for Athrun and the others to attend the concert in person.
Inori was a "supporting character." What she could change was limited to these kinds of side branches.
The Creuset Team's attack on Heliopolis was written into the main plot.
If she had been the protagonist—a character with enough screen presence—she could have turned the SEED set into a Revue Starlight and no one would have stopped her. But for now, her reach had limits.
If you ad-libbed irresponsibly with the script, the director would simply write your character out of the show.
"Here they come! Kira! Inori!"
Coming around to the back, Tolle and Miriallia rushed over to meet them.
(Miriallia and Tolle)
(The couple)
(Better-looking in the anime than the designs)
(Sai, you—!)
"Hey. Kira—Professor Kato asked me to give you these." Tolle handed over a stack of papers.
"Huh? But I haven't even finished the last assignment yet." Kira pressed a hand to her forehead.
"The professor really has no consideration for you, dumping all the tedious work on Kira when the professor knows you've got a part-time job on top of everything." Miriallia was indignant on Kira's behalf.
"The professor also said to come in first thing tomorrow morning to help out." Tolle shrugged. "We could just pretend we didn't run into you?"
"Well, Kira still has to graduate somehow. Professor Kato thinking highly of you is a good thing, isn't it?" Miriallia said.
"True, credits are credits…" Tolle shrugged again.
[That hit too close, bro]
[Ugh… credits… my head hurts]
[No pain here—I passed my makeup exam]
[Retaking confirmed. I'm crying]
[No way, people are really still failing courses? 2333]
Kira, for her part, didn't need to worry about graduating.
—Because by the time it came to that, the entire school would be gone.
Miriallia clapped her hands together. "Anyway, we can deal with tomorrow when tomorrow comes! You two rest tonight. Let's all go get dinner!"
It was technically date time for the two of them, but Tolle didn't mind the two girls cutting in.
The four of them headed out.
"Oh! Isn't that Inori!"
"No way, it's Inori!"
"The concert was amazing!"
"Keep it up, Inori!"
"Am I dreaming? The Songstress of Orb is just walking down the streets of Heliopolis!"
"Can I get an autograph? Huh? No autographs off-duty? Come on…"
One jacket was still just one jacket—Inori had been recognized almost immediately.
But Heliopolis was a semi-enclosed colony. The initial shock had faded over the nearly one year since she'd become the Songstress. When a celebrity walked these streets every day, even starstruck residents eventually built up a tolerance.
Of course, there were still bad actors—people who spread rumors online, though they would find Inori quietly following the connection back and ending them. And anyone bold enough to actually harass her in person had to get through Kira first.
Kira had, at Inori's suggestion, spent some time learning basic self-defense for exactly that reason.
The ones still genuinely excited were mostly fans and tourists from off-colony.
Tolle was the real casualty of all this—single-handedly "escorting" three girls through the crowd—and by the time they reached the restaurant, he looked like a man who had aged several years.
"The Songstress of Orb… that title really carries weight. Going out must be a constant headache for you, Inori." Tolle sagged against his chair.
Inori removed her jacket. "Everyone here is… kind."
"Speaking of which—how did that nickname even happen? Inori never asked to be the Songstress of Orb." Kira frowned slightly. "We turned down the official partnership offer. That was the whole point."
Even she, one of the people directly involved, couldn't trace exactly where the title had come from.
After Inori had "made it," Orb's official representatives had come to discuss collaboration. As a goodwill gesture, they'd granted Inori—a "refugee"—full Orb citizenship on the spot.
But Kira had handled those discussions cautiously, and no substantive official partnership had materialized.
While Kira was still mulling it over, across the restaurant at another table, a small group of people had been watching them for some time—and among them, Athrun had fallen into total disarray.
(Guilty Crown — Funeral Parlor)